I believe that everyone deserves a fighting chance to pursue their dream. The playing field is not level, but it doesn't have to be that way. We can design ecosystems to nurture innovators, entrepreneurs, and dreamers. We can accelerate innovation at scale, across companies, communities, and countries.

I'm a venture investor and entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. My company, T2 Venture Creation, is a unique innovation design firm. We make innovation at scale. We do this by creating entire ecosystems, what we call Rainforests. In other words, we do for ecosystems what incubators and accelerators do for startups.

How An Artist And A Dancer Helped Rebirth An American City

Culver City, once the heart of California’s movie industry, was dying just a decade ago. The downtown was decaying. It had become a sleepy commuter town. Today, however, people have proclaimed it an urban renaissance. Parts of the city that were once “forlorn and forgotten” are now crawling with high-tech companies and creative media professionals. Wine bars have sprouted throughout.

What happened? It is true that major social changes tend to be caused by the hard work of dozens, often hundreds or thousands, of committed people. In this case, among those people was a surprising husband-and-wife duo – Frederick and Laurie Samitaur-Smith – whom many people credit as a significant force behind the city’s transformation.

At first blush, they are unlikely heroes. Frederick was a former artistic assistant to Pablo Picasso. Laurie was the leading dancer at the opening production of one of Los Angeles’s great performance halls. But with their eclectic backgrounds, they were able to bring artistic sensibilities to urban development – particularly a focus on human emotion, interrelationships between people, and the core motivations that drive human action.

Are their lessons applicable to other cities? I believe the answer is yes. I’ve had the privilege of getting to know Frederick, after we realized that we are doing similar work. He was a featured speaker at our Global Innovation Summit last year. Frederick and Laurie succeeded in Culver City because they didn’t think of their work as merely building a city. Instead, they built an ecosystem. Ecosystems are based on the interconnectivity of things, not just the presence of assets. It’s not enough to have skilled people, good infrastructure, plentiful capital, and clever ideas. The key is how everything interacts together. Building ecosystems instead of concrete jungles is like making software instead of hardware. Think of it as designing the UX (user experience) of our economic lives.

(Shameless plug: If you seek to build your own ecosystems, join us for Global Innovation Summit+Week, on February 17-21 in Silicon Valley. The event provides practical tools and insights to foster sustainable, systemic innovation in our communities, companies, and countries. Last year, people from 49 countries participated. End of plug.)

I am pleased to feature this interview with Frederick about his and Laurie’s approach to reviving the innovative economy of a modern American city:

Victor Hwang: Many people credit you with reviving the urban vitality of Culver City. What was the approach you utilized to address such a difficult challenge?

Laurie and Frederick Samitaur-Smith

Frederick Samitaur-Smith: We focused on 4 primary areas simultaneously. First, we organized the surrounding community. This included assistance in securing financing for our neighbors’ home improvements. We asked them not to use credit cards or to buy automobiles. We gave seminars on “living within your means.” We encouraged them to save money while believing in the future they would get work that we would provide. That was our social contract.

Second, we worked to create jobs. With the objective of creating 600 jobs within an area of 1500 homes, we started with small work-related education programs, like explaining how computers worked, etc. We acted as mentors, not teachers. And when anyone questioned us, themselves, or the government, we addressed the community concerns through the history of their own past, and we sought in the past answers to the present. However, we noted the present concerns of the community could be addressed through the simple pragmatic solutions we were offering, because our objectives were tied clearly to the past social values and business models that created their communities in the past.

Third, we brought art. We actually discussed in open forums the meaning of physical and inner beauty, how literary history is filled with examples about how social differences based upon wealth and status were less important than developing ones’ minds. We emphasized the need for good education.

Fourth, we utilized architecture. We took “no place” and made it “some place” by changing the facades on the existing building product. We incorporated a sense of contemporary art in our structures that was related indirectly to the birth of the Silicon Valley. Specifically we studied Cubism, and the Avant Guard geometries expressed in that movement. We talked about non-linear math. And we showed a relationship between the two and real estate. Then we demanded that every one of our buildings, once finished, would aim towards achieving a critical mass that would cause people to be overwhelmed by a sense of place, a sense of hope or awe, perhaps even human understanding. We had sought to build what the community wanted without a professional charade.

Hwang: Why do most efforts at urban revival around the nation and the world usually fail? How does that contrast with your work in Culver City and other places?

Image Credit: Eric Owen Moss Architects

Samitaur-Smith: Our development was a private urban plan that did not seek to be funded by the government. We actually tried to avoid government financing. Because our economics and aesthetics were tied to a private program, our social ambitions were immediately comprehensible to private investors and banks, to the grassroots members of our community, and even to certain members within the elected city establishment.

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